| Author |
Message |
Vuffi Raa (Omicron)
| | Posted on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 8:55 pm: | |
I would like to address the issue of net play. Requiring to insert an ip address when wanting to play means u need to know someone in advance in order to play, this is very limited and cumbersome and almost completely unpractical.
I actually never played zillions on the net because I have never found someone to play with.
In every popular network game out there you arrive at a "lobby" where you can meet NEW and previously UNKNOWN to you players and make new friends. Yahoo games and MSN Zone are good examples to follow (Yahoo is better organized).
What I suggest is a two fold plan:
A: It is said in your site that network play was "overhauled". Well it needs a desperate re-overhauling or something to make it usable. Specifically, it will be great to logon to a server (like in Yahoo games for example) and see a list of online users and the game\s each want to play. If you want to go further, it would be great to have ratings for each player for each game.
B: Since installing a server that will do all that can take a while you can in the meanwhile add a chat area to your site so that people can easily find other surfers to play with.
I have just checked and there are over 162193 players online at Yahoo Games right now. I doubt there is even 1 percent of that playing ZOG online right now, and its not because the games are not as good, its because network play is impractical.
With the diversity of games in ZOG, a decent games server will easily get zounds of player to come. (So it will also be an economic plan.)
I really really hope that someone at ZOG will take this suggestion seriously since this is our last best hope to play chess variants and other great ZOG games on the net.
Help me ZOG developer you are my only hope.
Thanks,
Princess Leia Organa |
David Eugene Whitcher (Dralius)
| | Posted on Friday, February 14, 2003 - 7:22 am: | |
Dear Princess
It is true there is no web site to play ZOG on. It may be due to the fact that the only money generated by a pogo like site is advertising and such a venture would require a herculean effort to make it financially reasonable. If you are using version 2.0 you may use MSN Messenger to connect to other players without knowing their IP address. You do need to have contact with them in advance to know their MSN account. I am sure among the horde of zillions fans are a few people skilled in programming. A site that you can post requests for game play with a PBM like server that sends out confirmations and the MSN address would be all that is needed. This is not as slick as the game rooms you mention but adequate for our purposes and much less costly to maintain. Lets hope someone steps up to this challenge.
Your humble servant Dralius |
David J Bush (Twixter)
| | Posted on Friday, February 14, 2003 - 7:30 am: | |
A: "Find a server."
Sure, that would be nice. It also requires a server. Maybe Zillions is looking for one.
B: "Add a chat area."
Z 2.0 works with MSN Messenger, which is free. Is that chatty enough for you? Players can log on and immediately see which of their friends are online. See the thread "A place to meet?" for some names you can add to this list. With MSN Messenger, no IP pasting is necessary. I have played several Zillions games online this way.
Perhaps you would prefer all online Zillions users to be visible to you when you log on? There is a small issue of permission and privacy in the way of that. The only practical way to do that would be to have a common server. I refer you back to A.
I agree that a ratings system might be nice. So would time controls. These are usually things that a server does, but Zillions could do it.
David |
Vuffi Raa (Omicron)
| | Posted on Friday, February 14, 2003 - 9:34 pm: | |
David J Bush wrote:
"Z 2.0 works with MSN Messenger, which is free. Is that chatty enough for you? "
While this is nice it is still one on one communication and lacks the pleasantness and functionality of a lobby.
Hence I came up with this (probably not original at all) idea that won't cost a penny. Open a chat room at Yahoo Chat (under the Games category of course) and make it the "official" ZOG Get-together place. Add a noticeable link to it in the ZOG main page and Voila! You got yourself a get-together place that everyone knows about. Listing this in the Discussion area won't be enough because not enaugh people will notice this.
Of course it won't be official in any other way beside the link to it, but I believe this should be enough to get people together. Yahoo Chat can work with Java and thus is more easily accessible to people not familiar with Mirc. All you need is a yahoo user that can be created in minutes.
The only flaw with this plan is that user created rooms in Yahoo Chat disappear after everyone leaves them. Therefore the link needs to be to the room list page, and a note near the link should instruct gamers to open the room in case it doesn't exist at that moment. But this will probably only be a problem at the beginning, until enough people get to know about this.
Actually, I tried to open such a room there and failed for some reason. But this is probably just a problem with my computer.
Anyway here is the address of Yahoo Chat:
http://chat.yahoo.com/?myHome
This suggestion is not the slickest but I think its the best option in terms of practicality considering the limitations you mentioned. Also it can be done quickly with almost no effort at all - just add the link and explanation to the ZOG main page.
Vuffi/Omicron/Princess/Schizophrenic madman
or whatever.... |
Karl Scherer (Karl)
| | Posted on Monday, May 05, 2003 - 6:05 pm: | |
Hi Vuffi,
I have tried Yahoo Chat and found it totally unsuitable.
You need voice chat and that only works
sufficiently well when you have a fast internet connection.
Zillions does not need fast internet connections.
I would suggest to create something like what "Wordbiz" is for Scrabble, everything in one window
and working with all internet connections. |
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